Over 5,500 students register for IGNOU’s skill courses in colleges

than 5,500 students have registered for the skill development courses being offered by Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in the government colleges across the state.

Students from 110 colleges have shown interest in the courses, an official of the college education commissionerate said on Saturday.

Introduced with the objective of increasing employability of students through skill development, the courses have been started in the state’s colleges for the first time.

The courses that have drawn maximum students are food and nutrition, communication and IT skills, organic farming, and lab techniques.

The commissionerate in July this year sent out a list of sixteen courses to colleges and asked them to choose a maximum of five after gauging the interest of the students.

Besides certificate courses in subjects such as business skills, NGO management, and water harvesting, there are also oneyear diploma courses in tourism studies and business process outsourcing too.

The courses this year are starting from October 1 and the fees vary from ₹1,100 to ₹16,000.

However, the courses have been made free for students from scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. In addition, they will be made free for girls too from next year, the official added.

Furthermore, various government departments such as health, tourism, IT, agriculture, etc have consented to provide resource persons, who will train the students under these courses. In a coordination meeting of the departments, the representatives of the departments also agreed to take students as interns in the departments, the official said. The resource persons from the government departments will be remunerated per session by IGNOU.